THE FIRST CONVENTION (1937)

14 Queen Square as it is today. Leeds
Theosophical Society is now at no 12. (photo Rob Hansen, June 2011)

In January 1937, the Leeds chapter of the Science Fiction League brought
something new into the world: the first ever SF convention. (A counter claim
is made for an earlier visit of New York fans to meet Philadelphia
fans at the home of one of their number, but this is hard to take
seriously - see THE FIRST EVER CONVENTION, link below.) At a time
when travelling any distance was much more difficult than it is today,
several of those attending travelled hundreds of miles to be there. Held
in Leeds' Theosophical Hall, at 14 Queen Square, the main order of business was setting up
the Science Fiction Association, the UK's first national SF organisation.

After the convention - or conference, as they called it - a souvenir
report was issued (see below). Recently unearthed is a report on the
convention written by Ted Carnell in 1943 for his fanzine
SANDS OF TIME. A
link to this has now been added here:

Early convention literature did not contain a list of those who attended,
unfortunately. The list below was assembled from those
mentioned in the souvenir booklet. Fourteen fans appear to have attended,
though there was a bit of confusion on this point. As Sam Moskowitz
explained:

"Although the conference's OFFICIAL SOUVENIR REPORT claimed an attendance
of 'about twenty', Eric Frank Russell, who had been there, stated there
were thirteen, and an extant photograph of the group shows only eleven.
The report names fourteen...."

Apart from the headshots above, all photos in these pages were actually
taken at the convention. The remainder of these can be seen on the next page
(link below). In some cases the quality is not always all we might wish,
but these are the prints that have come down the years to us. Most if not all
of these appear to have been taken by Harold Gottliffe. My thanks to his
daughter, Jill Godfrey, for her kind permission to use them here.